My Century Wilson
Doreen Wilson Instructor: Dr. Daniel Cortright Capstone Seminar C390-6T2 November 22, 2011 MY CENTURY By Günter Grass Overview of 1960 to 1964 History Some 1960s costs: a new house $12,700, average income per year $5,315, gallon of gas $0.25, average cost of a new car $2,600. We had the Vietnam War with peaceful demonstrations and the Cold War between communism and capitalism. In 1962 there was the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in 1961 John F. Kennedy became the 35th President of the United States and was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The Civil Rights Movement was lead by Martin Luther King who was later assassinated. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. And in the early 60s women’s mini skirts and leather boots and men’s paisley shirts and velvet trousers were in fashion.1 1960 Armin Hary is an athlete sprinter on the German Team at the Olympic Games in Rome. His shoes were by Adidas and Puma, two companies run by two brothers who nearly cornered the market for running shoes and soccer boots. The brothers had previously both sold Adidas but they split and one brother started his own firm, Puma. This caused a rift between the brothers. For awhile, Armin Hary switched between the two companies for his record-breaking sprints, but Puma offered Armin Hary a good deal to go with them Now, the brother who owned Puma is deceased and there was never a compromise or reconciliation. The brother who is left perceives that they were taken in by a crook, Hary. When in Rome, Armin Hary argued with the relay officials, and within a year his career was over because he flagrantly flaunted the amateur rules. People blamed Adidas and Puma for putting him up to it which the brother said was nonsense. He thought the court’s ruling was minor and excluded the possibility of Armin Hary succeeding again. After Hary set the world record, which was a 10.0, he participated in other occupations and was involved in scandals. Hary subsequently served two years in prison for fraud. 1961 When the Berlin Wall went up a student at Technical University risked his life daily for a year helping people get out by using entry permits and working in groups. People were protesting. These days were thought of as the best days of your life. Being scared and meeting danger head on was our job. Nowadays the attitude is: “We know, Dad. You were real noble, your generation. “Operation Travel Bureau was run by mostly leftist students.” What counted was not politics but what you did. Passport pictures were transferred into West German or foreign passports. Contacts were found to bring passports with pictures and personal data. Also, the right kind of newspapers, small change, used bus tickets – the odds and ends that, say, a Danish girl would likely have in her bag. The work was tough and all free or at cost. Then there was the Bernauer-Strasse project. Without knowing it an American TV company made a documentary called the Bernauer-Strasse project, about a tunnel that was dug and 30 or so people being smuggled through the tunnel. The documentary was put on the air so the smuggling people out was carried on elsewhere. Although there were no casualties, refugees were taken through knee-deep raw sewage as they went through the sewers. Eventually the East German police caught on and threw tear-gas canisters down the hatch. There was a common wall with the Berlin Wall in a cemetery and a subterranean passageway was dug up to the graves for the clientele. But a young woman with a baby left a tram at the camouflaged passageway, which gave things away immediately. When the Berlin Wall was up people would talk about it. Then the wall came down suddenly and nobody is interested. The student’s wife is right when she says “You were another man back then. We had a real life….” 1962 Special bulletproof glass was used to made a cage, a glass cell, closed on three sides and open to the judges bench for Eichmann, the deportation king, Two brothers got out in time when the war broke out. The rest of their family was sent to Theresienstadt and then to Sobibor or Auschwitz maybe. Only Mama died a natural death. The brother Gerson, when the war was over, only found out the day the deportation took place and that there were whole trainfuls from Nuremburg, which is where their family had lived forever. In the glass box sat the man the papers called the mastermind of deportation. It was understood everything he did he did because he was following orders. After the trial was over and they strung Eichmann up, the papers stopped writing so much about him. Eichmann said if he had not been ordered to take charge of the deportations, the Jews might even have been grateful to him for personally initiating the mass migration. Jankele, the builder of the glass cell, said to himself “maybe you should be grateful to Eichmann for letting you and your kid brother take part in the mass migration. But for the rest of the family you should not be so grateful.” He would know who went where and how my sisters and our hard-nosed father ended up. But there were witnesses enough without me. Besides, I was glad to take charge of his safety. I think he liked his bulletproof cell. Why else would he have smiled the way did? 1963 A schoolgirl from a farm who is also a student of music and plays the flute is a cloakroom attendant on the good ship Philharmonie. The only person who really had something to say, that the girl respected, was Professor Julius Posener: “Scharoun’s job was to create a Piranesi-like space and turn its prisonlike character into something festive.” But she still maintains it is a ship – a floating prison – whose inner life is inhabited, infused, dominated by music – the music captured in space and immediately set free. She tested the acoustics by going to the podium and firing a gun with blanks. It went well and now, having given up music and taken up with architecture, she still works in the cloakroom at the Philharmonie. She experiences how much music and architecture complement each other, especially when a naval architect both captures the music and sets it free. 1964 Being pregnant and lost in the Romer, which is where you go to have a speedy ceremony in Frankfurt, the couple was at the Auschwitz trial and needed to go two stories down. Heiner, the groom had his family there as witnesses for the marriage. The family of the bride did not attend because they were against the marriage. She could not get the trial out of her mind so she kept going back. She tried to tell Heiner about what went on at the trial; the millions of people that were gassed and killed. Heiner never went and he did not want to hear what went on at the trial. When the subject was brought up at a family gathering, what was remembered was going home to a house in ruins. She then forced him to listen to what went on at the trial. Finally Heiner said: “Maybe we can take a trip to Cracow and Auschwitz isn’t far from Cracow. They even have sightseeing tours….”2 Bibliography 1”1960s History including Popular Culture, Events, Cost of Living, Technology, and Inventions.” ''The Peoples History. ''18 June 2006. Web. 22 Nov. 2011. http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1960s.html 2Grass, Günter. My Century. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1999. 153-167. Write the text of your article here!